A year of wonky weather in Hampton Roads

Wonky weather in Hampton Roads in 2012 included a freak tornado, a 500-year rain event and a rare species of hurricane so massive it earned a new descriptor: superstorm.

The month of June was bookended by tornadoes.

On June 1, an EF1 twister landed in downtown Hampton, skimming four miles through the streets at 98 mph. It felled power lines and trees, damaged more than 200 homes and several businesses, tossed dry-docked boats into a nearby parking lot. The city put storm damage at $4.3 million, but there were no major casualties.

Then on June 30 a string of powerful, fatal thunderstorms swept in from the Midwest to blast through the area, spurring reports of tornados in New Kent County and local winds as high as 64 mph. Downed utility poles left about 10,000 homes on the Peninsula powerless. The storms were blamed for six deaths in Virginia, although none in Hampton Roads.

Through the weekend of Aug. 25-26, the Peninsula got socked with rain so fast and furious it took meteorologists by surprise. The drenching, unrelated to any tropical storm or cyclone, dumped up to 8 inches in some areas in a 3- to 4-hour period in what the National Weather Service (NWS) called a 100-year event.

But even that was topped by the 8 1/2 inches that fell in a 3-hour period in areas of Newport News — "That's a little more than a 500-year event," said NWS meteorologist Jeff Orrock.

The year saw one of the most prolific hurricane seasons on record — ranking third among most-active since record-keeping began in 1851. There were 19 named storms, 10 of them hurricanes; a typical year sees 12 named storms, and half are hurricanes.

The only "major" hurricane in 2012, Michael, never made landfall. Major hurricanes are categories 3 to 5.

Then there was Sandy.

Technically a Category 2 at its peak, what Sandy lacked in strength it made up for in size: at one point, its clouds stretched from Detroit to Bermuda. A slow, plodding system, its outer bands reached Hampton Roads on Oct. 27, bringing wind and rain, surging tides, downed trees and flooded roads in low-lying areas, particularly Poquoson and Hampton.

Residents had braced for the worst; many long-timers said Sandy wasn't it. Some homeowners said the deluge in August had brought worse flooding.

It took days for Sandy to brush past at storm strength en route to the Northeast, where it accelerated to a hurricane and devastated coastal communities in New Jersey and New York, leaving millions without power and costing billions in damage.

Local meteorologists called it an "extremely rare" superstorm unique for its duality of structure: the massive wind field of a nor-easter packing the punch of a hurricane.